J.A. Tyler’s writing can be found almost everywhere. He’s gotten three acceptance letters since you started reading this post. His work leans toward the surreal. His stories tend to be short in length but are organized in a way that urges the reader to unfold the textures and myriad meanings within. Aside from being a prolific writer Tyler serves on the editorial board of many publications. He has seven forthcoming books, and he’s just started another. And with all that going on he still found time to chat with us. Read our interview after the jump. — Brian Allen Carr

Dark Sky Magazine: “The Kangaroos” is an excerpt from a longer piece titled The Zoo, A Going, which is slated to be printed by Dzanc in 2013. Can you talk a little bit about the book? How long have you been working on it? How did it find it’s home?

J.A. Tyler: Yes, I am so absolutely thrilled to be included with Dzanc and their growing stable of authors (Roy Kesey, Peter Markus, Ropert Lopez, and so many others).

The Zoo, A Going is written from the perspective of a young boy traveling to the zoo with his parents and seeing in his comparisons to animals and the sweeping scatter of his brain, how all of these things are connected, and how he fits and falls out of this world, each a little at a time.

It took me about 5-6 months to complete, working my way through a mental map of the Denver Zoo and all the exhibits that this family would see were they to attend its concrete loop. And, lucky me, it found its home with Dzanc through the normal channels: submission to their open window, waiting waiting, and then the confirmation that they wanted it.

It has been a ride thus far, and I am so excited for 2013.

DSM: What got you into writing? Have your aesthetic ideals changed much since you began?

JAT: I have been writing (in seriousness) for about five years now, and something about the art of being able to say so much to the world and not have to actually face the people who read it, the way they perceive it, their reaction to it, that is what draws me in — writing has this fantastically secretive aspect to it — even the biggest contemporary literary figures could most likely do their grocery shopping at the same store as everyone else with little or no disturbance.

And certainly, since I began writing, my aesthetic has changed enormously. My first novel(la) Someone, Somewhere (Ghost Road Press, early 2010) has a much more personal and smooth feel than say A Man of Glass & All the Ways We Have Failed (Fugue State Press, early 2011). But I think my aesthetic has at least reached a place where the continuing transformations are much much smaller and less drastic than they were in the first years of my work.

DSM: You’re one of the busiest folks in the indie print world. You publish like a fire storm and you work in several editorial capacities. How do you balance your time between life, editing and writing?

JAT: Really, I let it all find its own levels — when I have a heavy editing load I let my current writing ruminate in my head, mold and bloom there, and then get to penning it when time allows. And life, the same deal, I just shift my editing or writing to later and later at night or earlier and earlier in the morning — a day has more hours than people sometimes realize.

DSM: Does submission reading enhance or scar your writing?

JAT: I truly believe it greatly enhances my writing, and I think I owe a debt of gratitude to all of the near-sighted, bogus, cliché stories I have ever read in the submission inboxes — seeing those is what keeps me in line, keeps me thinking on a different plane (at least I hope).

DSM: You seem to publish as you go. That is to say, many of the pieces readers have seen in online and print publications are actually from book-length works. Is this more a byproduct of your writing or publishing method?

JAT: When I first began writing, I was working on traditional short stories, but I didn’t like having to give them that ultimate resolution. I wasn’t very good at that. So I started writing in fragments, in sections, vignettes where I could tack a pseudo-finish on one but then pick it up later and move it ahead. Publication just came naturally from that, worked well for me, and I have been writing that way ever since.

DSM: You work and publish in both print and online formats. What do you feel is the main difference between the two mediums?

JAT: Accessibility is the main difference for me. Writers can get exposure from both, can make money from both, and can start or continue a career in both. I am not a staunch advocate of either one, and I try to scatter my work liberally in both.

DSM: Finally, tell us a bit about your forthcoming novella Inconceivable Wilson. When can we expect it, what should we expect?

JAT: During a mad-lib type presentation, a student in one of my classes said the words ‘inconceivable wilson’ and I could not stop thinking about that phrase. What would it mean to be Wilson and to be inconceivable? What would it be like for a person to exist and yet not exist at the same time? And most importantly, how could that be made manifest in a piece of literature.

Thus: INCONCEIVABLE WILSON.

Inconceivable Wilson is fragmentary (as much as I have ever done) and is written from the first-person perspective of a cultural anthropologist being literally consumed by cannibals and metaphorically consumed by their culture and his own fading existence, embodied in a faint recollection of a woman in a red dress left at an airport holding a picture of Wilson that is no longer Wilson at all.

Jeremy Spencer has really put some great wheels on this book with his sharp design eye and his willingness to publish a scattered and purposefully broken text. Plus, being on the bill with Shane Jones whose A Cake Appeared will be published by Scrambler Books in 2010 is not at all bad company to share. Inconceivable Wilson is something I am so excited about seeing in print and I hope, as my debut work, it is well-received.

Yesterday we ran Tyler’s short story, “The Kangaroos.” Read it here.

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As an editor, J. A. Tyler founded mud luscious (est. 2007) & ml press (est. 2008). He is also review editor for Rumble, a frequent contributor to The Chapbook Review, a columnist for Lies With Occasional Truth, an editorial intern at Dzanc Books, a web editor with Pindeldyboz, & line-editor for Tarpaulin Sky. As a writer, his work has appeared in numerous online & print publications including Diagram, Sleepingfish, elimae, Caketrain, Hobart, Hotel St. George, Action, Yes, & many others. He has been nominated for Best of the Web, Best of the Net, & the Pushcart Prize & has won honors in recent contests with The StorySouth Million Writers Award, The Emprise Review, PANK, & Prick of the Spindle.

Tagged as: Literature in the Media, New Literature Online

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